Knopf

If you find yourself in a bookstore, Peter Mendelsund can be hard to avoid. His dust jackets wrap big-name contemporary releases like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He's created ingenious covers for reissues of Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and other literary giants, updating a wide swath of the canon with a striking, graphic look.Cover, a new monograph of Mendelsund's work, showcases the designer's uncanny talent for capturing entire books with succinct, compelling imagery-a talent that has led some to deem him the best book designer of his generation.

For the first time, BookExpo America - the United States' primary publishing event - focused its Global Market Forum on the topic of translation, rather than on a specific country. And from the beginning, the sessions rang with overlapping themes of missed chances, an ever-expanding marketplace, and the changing avenues toward translation.

The conference's keynote speaker was Rüdiger Wischenbart, director of International Affairs for BookExpo America, who noted, "This year, translations are a genre that are a true destination at BEA,

George Packer’s recent article in The New Yorker about the ever-increasing presence of Amazon is simply the latest in a long line of wake-up calls — or calls-to-arms — to the traditional book publishing industry. Amazon’s ability to sell directly to consumers, as well as use consumer insights to predict future purchases, continues to challenge the ways in which publishers think of their business models. In fact, publishers will likely have to change from a business-to-business model to a business-to-consumer model in order to evolve as brands and compete effectively in the marketplace.

The finalists for the 34th annual L.A. Times Book Prizes were announced Wednesday morning: 50 books in 10 categories are in the running to win the L.A. Times Book Prizes, to be awarded in April. Two authors will receive special recognition: John Green with the Innovators Award and Susan Straight with the Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

On Sept. 24, Jhumpa Lahiri's new Booker Prize-nominated novel, "The Lowland," will be released on this side of the Atlantic by Knopf in what promises to be a highlight of this most literary season. And yet surveying recent offerings in the bookstores, one can't help but notice a strange echo reverberating behind the esteemed author. Even the world of publishing, it seems, is not immune to the whims of fashion.

"No one wants to be derivative in book-titling," said Ms. Sohn, an occasional Times contributor whose novel was released in paperback this past summer.

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the most prestigious literary award in Britain, was announced on Tuesday morning. The six finalists are: "We Need New Names," by NoViolet Bulawayo (Little, Brown/Chatto); "The Luminaries," by Eleanor Catton (Little, Brown/Granta); "Harvest," by Jim Crace (Nan A. Talese/Picador); "The Lowland," by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf/Bloomsbury); "A Tale for the Time Being," by Ruth Ozeki (Viking/Canongate); "The Testament of Mary," by Colm Toibin (Scribner/Penguin)

Publishing giant Random House is partnering with Food Network to create a television series based on the upcoming cookbook The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen. The series will be called Heartland Table and will star Thielen, a James Beard Award-winning food writer and former professional cook. The show premieres on September 14th, and the book hits shelves on September 24th. According to the press release below, the show marks the first time an author's cookbook and television show "have both been produced internally by Random

The merger of Penguin and Random House is expected to close in July, creating—with sales of £2.5bn—the largest trade publishing business ever. Ahead of any announcements about its forthcoming plans, The Bookseller asked a range of industry insiders what the new management team should do:

Dennis Johnson, publisher and co-founder, Melville House

If I were the CEO of Random Penguins, I would...
1. Join those b******* at Apple in standing up to the American government's persecution of the publishing industry, and to its protection of Amazon's monopoly.

The number of parties has dwindled and there are fewer blockbuster celebrity authors, but the actual business of book publishing looks a little brighter this year.

Book Expo America, which kicks off at the Javits Convention Center today, is designed to bring independent booksellers together so that publishers can hype books they think will be big sellers in the coming months.

Yesterday, the Alfred A. Knopf imprint announced “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the third book in British writer Helen Fielding’s mega-selling series about the travails of a single woman. The first two books became international sensations in the 1990s